ISBN or ISSN?

rudy

Posted 19 February 2007 - 01:48 PM

rudy

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Canada

We produce commercial street maps and have generally used ISBNs for our products. However, someone recently made the suggestion that we should be using ISSNs for our publications as they get updated regularly and could be considered to be a serial publication. I've done a bit of looking around and can't find any mention of maps getting regularly updated qualifying as a serial publication.

Does anyone have any thoughts on using one over the other? Any recommendations?

Rick Dey

Posted 20 February 2007 - 12:48 PM

Rick Dey

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United States

A number of years back I had a colleague that I worked with that had come from a Library Science background constantly chastising me for the use of ISBNs as opposed to ISSNs. As I recall a little of the history had to do with a couple of major map publishers that didn't want their product to have to be destroyed on a regular basis adopting the use of ISBNs. Additionally some of the big retailers seemed to prefer not having to update their databases any more often than necessary.